The 2019 annual HealthWatch symposium is on its way. The topic will be "Evidence, healthcare and medical devices" as the issue of evidence for implants and devices is an important area, poorly understood and regulated. Last year the Committee decided to turn strategic attention to this over the next few years.

The symposium is being coordinated by John Kirwan. We are delighted to be pinning down speakers (inc Carl Henegan who wrote this piece about the vaginal mesh scandal) and workshop subjects.

It will be held on the afternoon of Monday June 17th in London (in an accessible venue near overground and underground).

Further details to follow – but please book the slot in your diaries NOW

The 2019 HealthWatch student prize competition for critical appraisal of clinical research protocols is open! Starting now… you have three months to write, refine and perfect your entry, but don't leave it until the last minute!

Cash prizes

There are two first prizes of £500 each, one for medical and dental students and one for students of nursing, midwifery and professions allied to medicine. Up to five runner-up prizes of £100 will be awarded in each class. Prize winners will be invited to attend the HealthWatch Annual General Meeting in October to receive their prizes.

How to enter

The competition consists of four hypothetical research protocols: your task is to rank the protocols in order from that most likely to provide a reliable answer to the stated aims of the trial to that least likely to do so. You then have to explain your ranking in no more than 600 words.

Please pass on to any students, organisations, colleges, universities, etc you think might be interested.

Your entry must be submitted before 23:59 BST on Tuesday 30 April 2019. Entries received after that time will not be considered. Find out more and enter here. The full terms and conditions, with the competition protocols for you to read, can be found here.

Beyond acknowledging that we have a problem, can we do anything to correct it?

Following in the footsteps of previous popular HealthWatch debates, we have organised a meeting for 19.00 on Thursday, 4 October 2018 to discuss ways to combat mis- and dis-information. (We are consigning ‘fake’ to Trump and Twitter.)

It will be led by two researchers with a special interest in the subject:

Geoff Walton, from Manchester Metropolitan University has studied how young how people form judgements on online information, and

Jens Koed Madsen from the University of Oxford, who is passionate about the potentially harmful effects of misinformation and is trying to model how we might intervene to modify such information or beliefs.

They will be joined by award-winning medical journalist and GP, Faye Kirkland.

We also hope to invite authors, researchers and representatives of institutions concerned with the issues involved to come to offer informed contributions from the floor.

Map

As usual, attendance at the HealthWatch AGM and presentations is free and open to all. If you would like to stay for the dinner, however, this must be pre-booked and paid for in advance, see the agenda below. While all are welcome to attend the AGM, only members may vote.

The 2018 HealthWatch Award will be presented to Dr Sarah Wollaston MP.

Sarah Wollaston is that rare politician: a scientifically literate and sceptical MP. She consistently uses her background as hospital doctor, GP and forensic examiner for the police, to bring a logical and dispassionate analysis to social problems and affairs of state.

Even more precious, she will change her mind in the face of new, sound evidence. Her track record includes advising on the ill-considered Saatchi Bill, supporting minimum-unit pricing for alcohol, chairing the government’s Health Select Committee, and defending patients’ confidential information. She has always maintained the highest level of personal integrity. HealthWatch applauds her.

Sarah will give a talk entitled, From GP to MP: How to Lose Friends but try to Influence People

Agenda

18:30 Reception for the AGM and Award ceremony.

19:00 Annual General meeting of HealthWatch (only members of HealthWatch may vote, but non-members are welcome to attend).

Nominations for Committee

Our constitution requires that nominations for officers and members of the committee should be submitted not less than 28 days before the AGM.

Any member of HealthWatch can nominate an officer or ordinary member for the committee. Nominations should be seconded by another member, accompanied by a letter from the person nominated to state s/he accepts, and sent to the Secretary, Prof David Bender or by post to 8 Eagle Close, AMERSHAM HP6 6TD before 3rd October.

The deadline for the Summer issue of the HealthWatch Newsletter will soon be here and we're already collecting articles and letters from our members, friends, supporters and interested readers.

The HealthWatch Newsletter in pdf format is openly accessible online immediately on publication so that our contributors can benefit from as wide an audience as possible, and may share their work freely.

For our Summer issue we are looking for topical and thought-provoking material from new contributors. Opinions, book reviews, letters commenting on current issues of interest are also welcomed for consideration.

Please send your articles by 1st July for target publication date around August. For more information and details of how to submit please see our Information for Authors page.

A letter to The Times signed by 15 HealthWatch experts and supporters sparked a deluge of media coverage when it urged women offered catch-up after missed breast screening invitations to “look this gift horse in the mouth”.

HealthWatch chair, Susan Bewley, professor of women’s health at King’s College London, penned the letter on learning the news that an estimated 450,000 women aged 68-70 had not been invited to routine NHS mammography screenings because of an IT failure dating back to 2009. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, had claimed that between 135 and 270 women might have had their lives shortened as a result.

These figures, based on statistical modelling, were disputed by many in the medical and statistical community, and Bewley’s letter quickly gathered signatories from among HealthWatch supporters including Michael Baum, who as professor emeritus of surgery at University College London was an architect of the original breast screening programme in the 1980s.

The letter, headed “Screening ‘flaw’”, appeared on Saturday 5th May and was accompanied by a page 9 article by Chris Smyth, The Times’ Health Editor, titled “Women are urged to avoid catch-up breast screening”. It quoted from Bewley’s letter, “The breast screening programme mostly causes more unintended harm than good, which is slowly being recognised internationally. Many women and doctors now avoid breast screening because it has no impact on all-cause death”.

Dr Margaret McCartney, HealthWatch patron and our 2008 HealthWatch Award winner, joined Susan Bewley and broadcaster Nick Ross, HealthWatch’s president, in a further letter published in the Guardian, 7th May: “Impact of mass breast cancer screening has been overrated” which called on Public Health England to “publish its modelled estimates so scientists and statisticians can check them. In the absence of good evidence it was disgraceful to suggest women died needlessly.”

Margaret McCartney wrote in the BMJ on 14th May (BMJ 2018;361:k2055) “Can we now talk openly about the risks of screening?” criticising the government’s plan to extend the screening age range in a massive clinical trial without participants’ consent.

Other publications home and abroad took apart the Department of Health’s wobbly maths.

And finally … Private Eye, in its “Medicine Balls” column this week, noted that while medical negligence lawyers are licking their lips, it will be nearly impossible for anyone to prove a life had been shortened. On the contrary, “By opting out of screening, a women will lower her risk of being labelled and treated for early breast cancer with no benefit to her quality of life or life expectancy.”

HealthWatch has been raising concerns about breast cancer screening and its shaky evidence base since 2001, and continues to work to raise awareness of the risks and promote correct information to doctors and the public to enable informed choice.

Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are consulting on proposals for homeopathy for a second time.

We reported on their first consultation last year. This overlapped with a consultation by NHS England and we understand some homeopaths had complained to the CCGs about the way their consultation had been run. This second consultation should finally decide the fate of homeopathy in the area.

The aim of their proposal is to review the commissioning of homeopathy services and treatments and includes three options.

The homeopathy service should continue under the current policy where funding is granted if the patient meets the published criteria

The current policy should be amended to reduce access either by reducing the number of appointments routinely funded or by restricting the access criteria so the fewer patients will qualify for treatment

NHS funded homeopathy is only available in rare and exceptional circumstances and would need to be approved by the Individual Funding Request Panel (IFR)

The consultation closes on Sunday 15 April 2018 so plenty of time to submit your response online. This is little more than indicating how strongly you agree or disagree with each of the three proposed options, but you have the opportunity to provide further information if you so wish.

The 2018 HealthWatch student prize competition for critical appraisal of clinical research protocols is now open.

There are two first prizes of £500 each, one for medical and dental students and one for students of nursing, midwifery and professions allied to medicine. Up to five runner-up prizes of £100 will be awarded in each class. Prize winners will be invited to attend the HealthWatch Annual General Meeting in October to receive their prizes.

The competition consists of four hypothetical research protocols: your task is to rank the protocols in order from that most likely to provide a reliable answer to the stated aims of the trial to that least likely to do so. You then have to explain your ranking in no more than 600 words.

Please pass on to any students, organisations, colleges, universities, etc you think might be interested.

Your entry must be submitted before midnight BST on Monday 30 April 2018. Entries received after that time will not be considered.

In recent years the health service has seen the emergence and increased use of new professional roles within multi-disciplinary teams as part of a continuing drive to provide safe, accessible and high-quality care for patients.

Four of these roles are:

physician associate (PA)

physicians’ assistant (anaesthesia) (PA(A))

surgical care practitioner (SCP)

advanced critical care practitioner (ACCP)

As these professionals become more widely employed, it is necessary to explore the options for professional regulation.

This consultation seeks your views on the following proposals:

To introduce statutory regulation for PAs

To seek further evidence on the most proportionate level of regulation for PA(A)s

To seek views on the position that statutory regulation of the SCP and ACCP roles is not proportionate, and whether alternative options for professional assurance should be considered

A consultation document and a risk assessment profile from Health Education England (HEE) are published alongside this consultation.

Responses

We will be considering whether to submit a formal HealthWatch response and we encourage our members to think about their own personal response.

HealthWatch has responded to the Government's consultation on research integrity with a practical proposal to address the issue of incomplete and inaccurate reporting of clinical trials.

The proposal, submitted jointly with Universities Allied for Essential Medicines UK, TranspariMED, and Dr Simon Kolstoe, calls for a national clinical trial audit system that would substantially strengthen research integrity by monitoring the registration, summary results posting and academic publication of every trial conducted in the UK. It refers to a pilot trial of such a scheme that was conducted over 2010–11 at the University of Portsmouth by Simon Kolstoe, senior lecturer in research design and ethics there. The pilot used documents already held by research ethics committees to monitor retrospectively whether trials have been registered, post summary results within 12 months, and publish accurate results. It found that such an audit was effective and could be implemented at minimal cost.

The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry into Research Integrity was launched initially in January this year to look at trends and developments in fraud, misconduct and mistakes in research and the publication of research results, and the so-called 'crisis in reproducibility' of research. It had begun to take evidence but was closed on trhe dissolution of parliament for the general election, and there were fears that valuable evidence already submitted might not be heard (see Spring/Summer 2017 issue of the HealthWatch Newsletter, p3). The inquiry was re-opened on 13th September and closed on 5th October with nearly 100 submissions received from experts and concerned groups.

The submission of which HealthWatch was a joint signatory was prepared by Dr Till Bruckner, of TranspariMED, a UK-based initiative that develops and promotes policy solutions to the problem of evidence distortion in medical research.

The 2017 HealthWatch Award will be presented to the BMJ Investigations Editor Deborah Cohen, in recognition of her courageous reporting of medical issues in the face of attack from vested interests.

She has written about drug and medical device regulation, access to clinical data, cost of medicines, research integrity and conflicts of interest, as well as collaborating on documentaries with the BBC Panorama and Newsnight, Channel 4 News and Dispatches. Her recent BBC Panorama investigation, Inside Britain’s Fertility Business, exposed private fertility clinics selling costly “add-on” drugs, tests and treatments of questionable efficacy.

Agenda

18:00 Reception for the AGM and Award ceremony.

18:30 Annual General meeting of HealthWatch (only members of HealthWatch may vote, but non-members are welcome to attend).

20:00 Buffet dinner (£45.00 per person). To order your buffet dinner, please complete the form here.

Nominations for Committee

Nominations for officers and members of the committee must be submitted not less than 28 days before the AGM. There is currently one vacancy on the committee. Any member of HealthWatch can nominate an officer or ordinary member for the committee. Nominations should be seconded by another member, accompanied by a letter from the person nominated to state s/he accepts, and sent to the Secretary, Prof David Bender or by post to 8 Eagle Close, AMERSHAM HP6 6TD before September 30th.

The deadline for the Autumn issue of the HealthWatch Newsletter is coming up and we'd love to have articles and letters from our members, friends, supporters and interested readers.

As of this year the HealthWatch Newsletter in pdf format is openly accessible online immediately on publication so that our contributors can benefit from as wide an audience as possible, and may share their work freely.

For our Autumn issue we are looking for topical and thought-provoking material from new contributors. Opinions, book reviews, letters commenting on current issues of interest are all welcomed for consideration.

Please send your articles by Monday 18th September for target publication date during October/November. For more information and details of how to submit please see our Information for Authors page.

Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are consulting on their proposal to decommission all NHS-funded homeopathy.

After the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital closed in January 2013, homeopathy continued to be provided by a small clinic at the South Bristol Community Hospital. Just three years later, in October 2015, this too closed to be replaced by a private clinic, the Portland Centre for Integrative Medicine. That is not part of the NHS but is contracted by the CCGs to provide homeopathy services.

Now the group of CCGs wants to end all homeopathy referrals to that clinic.

The consultation consists essentially of just two simple questions:

Do you understand the reasons for our proposal to stop NHS funding for homeopathy treatment? Yes|No

Do you agree or disagree with our proposal to cease NHS funding for homeopathy? Agree|Disagree

…with the opportunity to explain your answers and provide further information.

The consultation closes next Tuesday, 15 August 2017 so plenty of time to submit your response, but don't leave it too late!

Mailing lists

If you are a member of the media or connected with a medical school or medical student organisation, please subscribe to our email list to receive occasional emails about press releases, our annual student competition and other news items we think might be of interest to you.